Curriculum Development

The formalization of curriculum development as a practice in the U.S. public schools can be traced to [Page 203]the early 20th century and the defining principles embodied in the work of John Franklin Bobbitt. Using a technique known as activity analysis, Bobbitt tried to identify activities in the school that he believed prepared the learner for specific tasks in life—among them vocational, sociocivic, familial, and intellectual tasks. His effort to connect the main activities of life to the actual conduct of the school represented an early systematic approach toward organizing and ultimately exercising some control over what got taught in schools. This desire to find a way to deliberately and consciously direct the conduct of the school became the driving principle behind the rise of the curriculum field and the valorizing of a process that has since become known as curriculum development.

Today the idea of curriculum development is still associated with the design and operation of schools, although disagreements exist over just what comprises the details of the curriculum development process. Many educators still equate curriculum development with subject matter organization, believing that the curriculum is improved by changing or otherwise reorganizing what gets taught. The bias inherent in such a characterization of curriculum development makes a distinction between the term curriculum and the term instruction, implying at least some analytical separation between what is taught (the curriculum) and how it is taught (instruction). The curriculum development process, however, is organic and comprehensive in its outlook. It makes it clear that any determination about how to teach has to be done in relation to what gets taught and that any determination about what gets taught has to be understood in relation to wider learning purposes and accompanying learning effects.

Fortunately, the curriculum studies field has yielded a historical model of curriculum development that accounts for the comprehensive dimensions of the school experience. General consensus, embodied in the work of, among others, J. Wesley Null, Daniel Tanner and Laurel Tanner, and Peter Hlebowitsh, points to a procedural definition of the curriculum development process that includes the tasks of planning, implementing, and evaluating the school experience. Such a view necessarily accounts for some conceptualization of what gets taught (via subject matter, values, and skills) as it intersects with teacher decisions over how to teach and how to demonstrate whether learning has actually taken place. Originally articulated by Ralph Tyler, and later by Hilda Taba, such a view of curriculum development can be conceived as a three-part process that includes (1) some statement of purposes (embodied as specific objectives and content organization), (2) some instructional response on how to teach in relation to explicitly articulated purposes, and (3) some program of evaluation of outcomes.

As indicated, this procedural model for curriculum development is historically associated with the work of Tyler, who used four key questions to outline the continuum from purposes to experiences to evaluation:

• 1.
  What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?
• 2.
  What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?
• 3.
  How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?
• 4.
  How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?

Tyler's questions, often referred to as the Tyler Rationale, set the foundation for the design of the school curriculum, as evidenced by later efforts to expand upon the four questions, notably in the work of Taba, who identified a seven-step curriculum development process that included (1) diagnosis of needs, (2) formulation of objectives, (3) selection of content, (4) organization of content, (5) selections of learning experiences, (6) organization of learning experiences, and (7) determination of way to evaluate. The Tanners assert that Tyler and Taba worked out of a progressive tradition that had its ancestry in John Dewey's phases of reflective inquiry, which helped to frame the idea of curriculum development in relation to a problem-solving process.

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